


Unexpected Lions

by DarqueRain



Category: Twincest - Fandom
Genre: Blood and Violence, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Shifter, Twincest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:44:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21511258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarqueRain/pseuds/DarqueRain
Summary: Daya is raised in a community built by his mother after a virus killed off most of the world. He's only known love and support, but not everyone is so lucky.Alastar was raised with what most call pirates. Men in this kind of group take women captive and kill other men outright. Alastar has never known love, not until he meets Daya.Daya is about to lead his community with his mother and father, and sets out to learn the outer world on his own before he does. He comes across a boy his age, handsome and beaten down by life. All he wishes is to take Alastar home and help him find his happiness.Nothing seems to go right, and they are separated, both thinking the other is dead. When Daya discovers his gift, and a terrible secret his mother kept from him, he sets out on his own into the vicious world he's never known.
Relationships: Daya/Alastar





	1. Chapter 1-Daya

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a published M/M writer that wants to get back to my gritty, dirty roots. This is my first shifter and will be the first taboo I will publish. I will complete this here, though this is the rough draft (excuse typos/etc) and the published work will be rewritten and edited.  
> Thank you for reader, and let me know if you're enjoying it!

Daya  
There were three new residents of New Day Commune, the biggest settlement in a hundred miles or more. As Daya searched through the campfire in the commons, looking for that one perfect piece of charcoal, one of the newcomers stopped and questioned, “What are you looking for?”  
Daya was the prince of the settlement. No, not royalty, like he’d read in books, where he sat on the throne or had the most of everything. It was just that he was the prince, what with his mother being the queen.  
He was less than six-foot-tall, and weighed little for his height, but he was fit, strong, and knew how to fight, thanks to his warrior parents. “I need a thin piece that won’t crumble.”  
Nineteen years he’d lived there and saw many come into the community. War torn, that’s what his mother called them, ragged and weary. This one had that look in his blue eyes, like he’d seen too much and feared everything. Daya’s heart went to him.  
“Like…to draw or something?”  
He was older, maybe forty, like Daya’s mother, Teresa, but he didn’t have the look of a warrior, as she had. Standing and wiping his hands on the long cloth Daya wore around the lower half of his body, he smiled warmly and explained, “I need it for my eyes.”  
The guy blinked, trying to understand. “For your eyes?”  
“Yes. I adorn my eyes with it.”  
Cat’s eyes, his mother bragged. She wasn’t thrilled with the green of them, for some reason she wouldn’t explain. It wasn’t simply the color that made her call them that, but they were shaped like a cat’s as well. Sharp, narrow, lined with long black lashes that matched his hip-length black, silky hair.  
“Like makeup? Like…like a woman? What kind of place did you people bring me to?”  
As he was saying it, Daya’s mother was passing and heard the man’s words. She strolled over, never in a rush unless she was hunting or scouting, and informed him, “A place of peace. If we don’t conform to your standards, you are free to leave.”  
Laughter started to come from the man’s dry, cracked lips, and Daya cringed as that was quickly cut off as Queen Teresa, like lightning, grabbed her dagger from the back pocket of her overly worn jeans and the tip placed on the guy’s Adam’s apple.  
Once the shaking began, he blubbered, “I…I’m sorry!”  
“My son is a two-spirit. Not that you’d know what that was. We don’t belittle people here. There’s no freedom of fucking speech in my community if it means hurting someone with words.”  
His hands raised past his shoulders and he nodded, though that made the dagger poke into his throat, drawing the tiniest drop of blood. “I understand, your…your highness.”  
She dropped her arm and spat, “I’m not your fucking highness, and don’t tell me, tell my son.”  
With sincerity, the man said, “I am sorry. I didn’t mean nothin’.”  
“It’s fine,” Daya assured, and was sorry the whole thing happened. Teresa was protective of him, which was normal, being his mother, but she was crazy when it came to his safety and happiness at times. Stifling, more like it.  
“Mom, stop. He just got here.”  
She left them after running a hand over his hair, heading for the medical cabin.  
Slinking off, shoulders low, the man didn’t say another word, and Daya went back to his search for the perfect piece of charcoal.  
The community was built next to a long, naturally formed stone wall. Fencing was doubled around the place on the other three sides to keep out the wandering pirates that invaded communities, taking food, supplies and women.  
They’d fought them off several times, always sending them away with their figurative tales between their legs, but there were always more of them, and that was what Teresa worried about the most. Sometimes, Daya would see her, sitting alone, lost in thought and worry, creases deep between her brows. Tears would come at times, but not often. He’d rarely seen his mother cry.  
Later, after finding the right piece of charcoal, he found his mother weeding the herb garden that supplied the healers. He knelt to help her pull stork’s bill from the lavender patch and tried to think of how to ask about the man’s reaction to Daya’s wearing black around his eyes.  
“Daya, just say it.”  
“Am I weird? I mean, I know I am a little. No other boys wear what I do. They say it’s a dress. You are the one that makes me wear this thing,” he said, holding out the collar of beads and leather that made a thick ring around his neck, covering to his collarbone in front and as far in the back.  
“It’s not a dress. It’s called a sarong, but what if it was a dress? You’re two-spirit, son. I’ve told you many times. Most people have one spirit inside of them. Male, female, whoever it is, they have one. You’re special. You have two. Your female spirit is strong too, and you should never push her away.”  
“Are you?”  
She stopped her weeding and looked over to him, and once again, Daya was amazed at her beauty. Darker skin, like his own, high cheekbones, also like his. Her eyes were catlike as well, though hers were brown and tired, most of the time. She had full lips, as he did, but hers rarely smiled. At least not a real smile, never traveling up her pretty face to her eyes.  
“Am I what?”  
“Two-spirit.”  
She stood and waved him to follow her, and they sat under an elm close by. Her eyes seemed to focus on the long branches as they caught a breeze, and there, she’d find the answer to his question.  
She fiddled with her own collar, then said in a deep voice, one that cracked with emotion Daya didn’t understand. “I was. Once. I had two strong spirits, but things happened that broke them into pieces. I had to put them together to make a whole one, and even my whole one has a few rips. You, yours are strong, each of them, son.”  
There was silence between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. They could sit for hours together, never saying a word, but they knew what the other was feeling. They were as close as he’d seen any mother and child. Daya lay his hand over hers and finally whispered, “I’ll take care of both of them.”  
“Good.”  
When someone inevitably came to ask for her help, she went with them, and Daya was left to wonder again about his mother. What had happened? He also wondered how she got there, to the place where she wanted to start a community. Hearing the story, how she’d fled Chicago after the flu had killed most of the people in the world, she’d met people and together they traveled to Colorado, finding the beautiful place they all now called home. If that was the case, if it had been so easy, how had her spirits been so torn she couldn’t mend them?  
He found his father, Julian, fixing a section of fence that had a hole large enough for a person to slip through. Daya knew that because he had slipped through it several times with his friends, breaking the rules, exploring the outside world. Not that it was much different than the world inside the fences.  
Green, beautiful, mountains all around them, aspen, pine, fir and spruce to shelter them from the sight of most travelers. Daya knew that when his parents and the few that they were with found the valley, Teresa had known it was to be where their new lives would begin again, and so named it, New Day.  
There were a couple original homes there, a couple smaller cabins, but the rest they’d built. The new cabins had heat, beds and everything the families or groups of individuals needed, and there was always plenty of work. Forty homes held the two hundred, with more being built to help. Children were born, schooling in the main building that was once a general store but was used for community services, and where Teresa had an office. She was rarely in it, being forced to make appointments if someone had a need or complaint. Preferring hunting, fishing, building, that was Teresa. The job of queen had been thrust on her by those she’d saved, given a home to. She insisted there be a council of elders, to advise her and vote on major things, but even they deferred to her wishes and wisdom.  
“What’s going on, Daya?”  
Julian was dark as the shadows, stood six foot five, and was muscled, strong as an ox, some said, though the only oxen Daya had ever seen were in books. Daya envied his father’s height and weight, wishing he’d inherited them. “I am a man now, you’ve said it before, right?”  
“Of course, you are,” he said, slinging a heavy arm around his shoulders as they walked down the embankment. “Where’s this coming from?”  
“Mom. I know she has a lot of story to tell, and I only get the blurb.”  
“Blurb? Lord, Daya, the things you say. You know your mother better than anyone alive.”  
Daya shrugged the arm off him and spun on his father, demanding, “Tell me? What the hell happened to her?”  
His father was not only tall, dark and strong, he was easily angered. Probably for the same reasons Teresa was. There was a deadly warning in his voice, though Daya knew he’d never raised a hand to his son, it still scared him pissless. “Daya…”  
“Sorry.” He blinked up at him, smiling sweetly, as he had when he was a boy, disarming his old man fast.  
Wiping sweat from his bald head, his father laughed loudly, chiding him, “Your child tricks don’t work now, being a man and all.”  
“Can’t hurt to try, right? I mean, is it so horrible?”  
His father insisted to put the arm around him again as they walked and started to speak. Daya hated that everything he said made so much sense. His voice was like music, deep and vibrating him, hitting all the notes he needed to be soothed. It was as he had done when Daya was small, singing bedtimes songs and reading him books. “Imagine living in a world with millions of people. Loving some of them, like families love each other here. Imagine that world dying in a few months and being alone. Completely alone. Like, oh, when you sneak out sometimes, and no one is around to keep you safe.”  
Daya sucked in a breath, understanding for the first time that his father knew of his excursions.  
More deep, booming laughter from his father before he continued. “Imagine it, you’re out there, and you come back, and everyone you ever knew, that you ever passed by as you walked home each day, they were dead. You, the only one left, had to strike out on your own, making it in a world that was no longer safe or familiar. Then, when you did find people, they weren’t all nice. You had to fight for your food, for everything. That’s what we all had to do to get here, Daya. Some of us, well, we tell our tales around the campfire. Some to brag, others to vent, to remember too. Remember those we lost. Still others, though, like your mom, she doesn’t want to talk about it. She needed to keep some things all hers. Memories are some of the only things we can ever keep all to ourselves, Daya. Let her have hers, and one day, if she’s ready, she’ll share them. Just be sure you’re ready to hear them.”  
Ominous, the statement gave him chills on the warm day, but he left the rest of his questions to fester in the back of his own mind. His father was right, of course, that he couldn’t pry things from his mother. Still, one day, he thought he may have to know. It was a nagging in him, and one that didn’t stay silent for very long, ever.  
Seeing one of his favorite escape routes fixed, he headed over to where he knew his best friend would be, on a bench behind the apple trees that were fully loaded with fruit. He found Roger, only to see him in the arms of his girlfriend. Ginny, who Daya liked as well, smiled over at him, giving him a wave. “Roger, Daya’s here.”  
Roger, who was broad and brunet, handsome, with a low brow and squared jaw, was still munching on her neck, but she managed to push him away as he moaned, “Daya, who?”  
“Your best friend,” Daya reminded him. “The one who saved you from the rattlesnake four years ago with my quick actions and warrior skills?”  
“Oh, yeah, the one with the overblown ego? I remember him,” Roger teased. “What the hell do you want?”  
Daya sat on the other side of Ginny, who was the prettiest girl in camp, long reddish blonde hair and pale, pretty face. She held his hand and asked in a much nicer way, “What’s up, honey?”  
“Well, my dad just covered the part of the fence where we’ve been getting out, so now what?”  
“You’re the one with all the plans. We have a couple more places we can try.”  
“He got those yesterday, and if we keep breaking pieces of the fencing, we’re going to get in trouble.” Again, Daya complained about the same thing he had a million times. “I can’t believe we have to wait until we’re twenty to become scouts.”  
“Daya, you’re never going to be a scout. When you turn twenty, you’ll be king of the place. You’ll have to help your mom run things.”  
“Then I’ll have the power to appoint myself as a scout.”  
As Roger rolled his eyes, laughing good-naturedly at his friend, Ginny gave him a boost. “I agree with you, Daya. I mean, some of the kids came here not knowing how old they were, the people picking them up along the way. That one kid, he was maybe four, maybe five, so they make him wait the extra year for everything. It’s not fair.”  
“If it’s not fair, take it up with the queen and elders,” Roger reasoned, though he’d complained about it more than any of them before he’d gotten with Ginny romantically and fallen for her.  
Since, he’d grown up a lot, but Daya thought that there was more to it. “Why the hell are you sounding more like them, the damn adults around here?”  
“I am an adult now, Daya, and so are you,” he defended, face reddening. Daya could see him tensing, but noticed something else as well, but didn’t get his turn to speak until Roger finished with his lecture. “Maybe it’s time we grow up, stop running off on adventures that could get us killed. You’re nineteen, Daya, I’m eighteen, and we are seen as adults here now. So we can’t go scout for survivors and supplies, big deal. It’s not like they go out every week anymore, like when we were kids. Once a month, that’s it, new moon, scout trip, come home with little to nothing or a bunch of stuff and some people.”  
Every word he was ranting, Ginny’s hand had tightened in Daya’s, warning him to not interrupt, and when it dawned on him, he grinned, surprising Roger.  
“What are you smiling at?”  
“You guys are pregnant?”  
Standing fast, Roger glared at him like Daya had suddenly grown an arm from his forehead. “How did you know?”  
Daya didn’t answer right off, getting up to hug his friend, then turned to Ginny, kissing her cheek. “I think it’s great.”  
“Thanks, Daya.”  
“Who told you? Those bitties at the medical cabin? Gossips, I swear to-”  
Daya lay a finger over his mouth, then closed his jaw shut. “No one told me. You? Wanting to start being a grown-up? There’s only one thing that would do that.”  
Roger sat back hard on the bench, lower lip sticking out in a cute pout. Daya remembered how he’d once had the most terrible crush on his friend. That just accomplished reminding him that he had no one. “I’m never going to have that.”  
“Sure, you will, Daya,” Ginny encouraged, bringing him in for a hug. “You’ll find someone.”  
“Who? The two guys I used to mess around with are with each other now, in some stupid monogamous relationship, talking about getting married. Who the hell gets married? That died with the old world.”  
“There are a few people married here, Daya. It’s just a ceremony, a way to commit to one another, letting the others know that you and that person…well, you’re….”  
He watched her face, the way her ginger lashes lay over her cheeks, her pale skin reddening right over the bridge of her nose. He saw what she was saying, even though she wasn’t coming out and saying it plainly. “You’re getting married?”  
Roger looked anywhere but at him, too cowardly to answer. Ginny, however, confirmed, “We thought it would be nice. With the baby and all…”  
“My parents aren’t married! They never had to have some stupid ceremony.”  
They both turned to him, their faces saying, again, what their words couldn’t.  
Daya’s parents were committed to each other, true. They were close as anyone he’d known, and spent their lives with two purposes, to raise him and build the community. He’d never once seen them kiss, not like Roger and Ginny kissed. They’d never slept in the same room that he knew of, and they didn’t act like the others in the community that were in love. Still, he knew of no two people that were better together while fighting, hunting, or getting the people who looked up to them to understand and agree on things.  
“You’re a two-spirit, whatever, like your mom told you,” Roger said, probably hoping to change the subject back to what it had been. “You may end up liking women someday. Maybe your male side will…I don’t know…kick in?”  
He could get angry, especially after already having someone question his maleness, but Roger was innocent with his questions on the subjects like that. “I like men, Roger. I don’t think it’ll change. My male side is as strong as the female, my mother says. I don’t know much more about it than you do. I tell you everything. All I do know is, I like men.”  
Getting an elbow in the ribs from his girlfriend, Roger was still mulling it. “Two spirits. Two. And most around here don’t believe we have one. I don’t know what I believe, but two? And one’s a girl?” Once the elbow connected, he jumped and realized what he was saying. “Sorry, Daya.”  
“It’s okay, Roger. I’m unique. I like being that way.”  
For that, he got another kiss on his cheek from Ginny, and Roger was starting to get antsy about her doing that, so Daya decided to move on, taking a stroll around the settlement.  
If he was unique, it was because of his mother. She’d built the place, she’d saved so many, and she worked tirelessly to keep them all safe. There wasn’t a thing in the place that didn’t have her fingerprints all over it. Homes built, sheds to hold supplies, overhangs so people could work, even when the skies dumped snow five feet deep.  
He would, soon, have to join her in taking care of the people that had come to seek shelter from the cruel world outside. Leaning back on the weapons shed, he thought about it again, like he had more and more since he’d turned nineteen. In less than a year, he’d be the one they came to, along with her and Julian. They’d no longer let him have his childhood, like Teresa had insisted. They’d come and he’d have to be up to the task of taking care of things.  
Fighting, that was no problem. He could fight better than most anyone, except for his parents. They’d taught him from the time he could remember. Julian showed him how to use a wooden pole to swing and connect, block his opponent. He knew knives, spears, bows and arrows. Guns, which his mother used sparingly, he could shoot them as well, though he didn’t get a lot of chance to practice.  
From inside the shed, he heard a noise, a squeaking hinge by the sound. Pushing off the wall, he walked noiselessly to the side and peered around to see the door cracked, finding it odd.  
The farmers had done their jobs early and come back through the gate earlier that morning. The sentries weren’t due for a shift change for hours, and there was no hunting trip scheduled. He sneaked as silently as his mother taught him through the door and blinked to let his eyes adjust to the dim light.  
There were shelves on all the walls holding rifles, handguns and ammunition, either found or made. There wasn’t a lot, but it was enough for the hunts and the sentries. They hadn’t been attacked since Daya was little, and it was said his mother shot their leader between the eyes and that was all it took to send the marauders running.  
In the floor, there was a door he never knew was there. It opened to a set of stairs that led down into a basement and he walked easily over to it, so he wouldn’t alert whoever may be down there.  
Taking each step carefully, he saw there was a light, the flicker of a flame casting an eerie glow into the dank space below. His heart was pounding, and he guessed he was a little scared, but it was more than that. Finally, something exciting was happening. He was discovering something he’d never seen before, hadn’t grown up looking at day after day.  
On the floor of the basement, hard-packed earth, his eyes took in the sight that shocked him. Gone were his childish adventure fantasies of hidden treasures. There were no treasures there, only weapons.  
Daya walked along one of the many rows, seeing weapons he’d only seen in books. He ran shaking fingers over rocket launchers, elephant guns, pipe bombs. There were crates of bullets, of grenades, gallon jugs marked gun powder.  
“Daya,” his mother’s voice said behind him, and he spun, a million questions bubbling through him, but she held up a hand and dismissed them all with a word. “Don’t.”  
“Mom?”  
His hand was taken and he was led to a corner of the basement, where two metal chairs sat in front of a table that had the tools to make more bullets. That must have been what his mother was doing.  
Instead of a candle there, like there was on a couple of the shelves, there was a battery powered lamp. “Daya,” she started, unable to meet his eyes. “I was going to show you this soon. You’ll need to know about everything in here. You’ll need to know how to use each weapon.”  
“You hate this kind of thing. You hate the guns we have to use as it is!”  
Her eyes, so piercing, seemed to look into his soul. “Daya, why do you think your father and I have taught you the things we have? Why do you think we worry when you go off with your friends, looking for adventures and danger?”  
Daya wasn’t a child any longer, but it didn’t mean he didn’t act like one at times. “My safety.”  
“Yes, because you don’t understand what is truly out there.”  
An opportunity was presented him in that moment he couldn’t pass. “Then tell me, Mom. What dangers? I know, all the people talk about marauders and pirates. I know that, but I don’t even know what one looks like.”  
“They look like us, Daya. They look like anyone. Some dress the same as us, in clothes we make or those we find that are still wearable. They could be anyone. Oh,” she said, and her eyes clouded as she continued, “some wear black jackets with writing on the back, and you’ll know them when you see them. Those…those are the worst of them all.”  
Daya saw his mother as he’d never seen her before, and that was afraid. Her hands shook and she set them between her knees as she went on, “But most, they look like anyone. At any time, Daya, a group of them could come here and try to take from us. They’d take everything, our food, our medicine and this, how we defend ourselves. But worse, Daya, they’d take the women. They’d take them and do horrible things to them. Some of the women here? Those that don’t speak a lot and keep to themselves for months or years? They’ve been there, to those places, with those men. They’ve had terrible things done to them. And the men here, your friends, your father, he’d be killed outright. So, to defend us against those kinds of people we have to use the same weapons they may have.”  
Daya took all that in, though his imagination couldn’t stretch far enough, he knew, to see in his mind the things like his mother described. “Was it always like this, Mom?”  
“Yes, Daya. Mankind is anything except kind.”  
Daya left the shed, his heart heavy with the discovery and his mother’s warnings. Suddenly, the day seemed less bright, and the childhood he was so ready to leave behind, he wanted to turn back to it and stay there, innocent of the world.


	2. Chapter 2-Alastar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we meet Alastar and get a look at his life.

Alastar  
The new encampment was just like the old one, run down houses that hadn’t been lived in since the culling, dusty furniture, old bones to be tossed out of the beds and wherever the sick had last laid to finally croak.  
Ward, his father, barked orders from his place on the porch of the bigger of the three houses they’d camp in for a year or so. Sometimes it was only a couple of months, but since they’d come back to the mountains, they had to find a place to hole up for winter and start getting it ready for what could be rough weather.   
Alastar waited by the stairs as the last of the line petered out, and he stepped up to get his assignment. His father was a big man, and meaner than anyone else Alastar knew, and he knew plenty of mean fuckers.   
“What are you doing standing around?”  
“I…I was waiting for you to tell me what to do.” He didn’t say that if he’d taken the initiative to start a project on his own, he’d likely have gotten smacked around for it. No use giving his old man ideas.  
“Shit, boy, go help dig the latrines. It’s about all you’re good at.”  
The latrines. He’d spent a lifetime digging them. Plumbing, he’d heard the older folks in the group talk about that. How, in the old world, someone could go into a room, sit on one of the toilets he’d seen in all the houses and take a nice, healthy dump, then push a lever and the shit would just float away, out of sight and mind.   
He didn’t know a lot about the old world, only what he could pick up from people when they spoke about it, but it sounded great. The only problem was, if it was so great, how did it end? All those people dead, and all their crap left around, junking up the place.   
That was another job he was always given, clearing out the dead from the places they settled. He hated that job, bones falling out of rotted clothes, skulls rolling across the floor. It creeped him out and he would rather dig latrines any day.  
Ward would sit on that porch, probably have one or two of his slave girls brought out to sit with him, so he could torture her. His favorite pastime when he wasn’t raping them was flicking lit cigarettes at them. Those stale, twenty year old smokes that smelled awful, but he couldn’t do without.   
Alastar didn’t sleep under his father’s roof any longer, well, when he had a roof to sleep under, preferring to sleep on the edge of their marked territory. It was dangerous, but he never slept hard, keeping alert enough to hear predators approaching.  
The town was pretty, small, but nicer than some they’d stayed. When they’d moved south, the dust was chokingly heavy, and there was rarely a stream or river that wasn’t contaminated to get water from. After a few years of roaming there, Ward decided it was time to move back to the mountain region, where the water came straight from the snow and was less likely to get them sick or kill them all.   
There were a lot of trees, old stores, a post office with letters that he’d never be able to read piled up in stacks. No one had taught him to read, though a few had offered. One lady got close, but Ward found out and killed her for her trouble. He didn’t want Alastar to read, he said. He was meant for doing the work of a man, not reading love stories like a bitch.  
When they got to a new place, Alastar liked to imagine what it must have been like when people lived there. Normal people, like the older people spoke about so often. They spoke of them like they were idiots, that the world was better after the flu killed off all the suckers.   
The shovel went easily into the soft ground, and he was glad of that. A wisp of his longer bangs got in his face, but he mostly ignored it, the longest part of his badly cropped head of black hair. He loved the color of his hair, which was dark, unlike his father’s fiery hair and big bush of a beard.   
His skin, however, was too much like his dad. Pale, so pale he didn’t tan, he burned, and the burn then turned to more freckles. Then there were the scars, but some of the men said that scars were good, they showed that a man had been through something hard and came out the other side. That was true, he’d come through his father’s beatings repeatedly and somehow managed to live.   
“Hey, Allie.” The crass whisper from behind him sent rage through him, and humiliation that cut into his gut. “When you’re free, meet me in that nice little love shack next to the post office over there. I’ve made us a nice place to have some fun.”  
“Fun for you,” he mumbled. “Ain’t so fun for me.”  
After looking around to assure he wouldn’t be seen, Beaver’s nasty tongue slithered over his thin lips as he came around to face Alastar.   
The man looked like a snake, triangle shaped head, tiny eyes, and that long narrow tongue that dart out when he laughed in that hissing way he had. The hatred Alastar felt for him was only a little less than that he had for his father.   
“Aw, come on, baby, you know I make you come sometimes.”  
That was half true. Sometimes, when Beaver was raping him, if Alastar could go into his own head enough, he could imagine a beautiful man, one that was good to him, one that loved him and touched him in ways that he enjoyed. He’d imagine he was the one doing the fucking, and he was making his lover make roars with how good Alastar was making him feel.   
Then, yeah, he’d come, and he’d almost enjoy himself. That was until Beaver would speak, and break the daydream, making him want to lose what little food he’d consumed that day.   
“I gotta dig this, or Ward will kill me.”  
“Sure, sure. After, though, come over there and bring some grease, unless you want it raw.”  
Once Alastar heard him walk off, he slammed the shovel into the dirt and leaned there, keeping the tears at bay, barely. He felt them, rising not only in his eyes, but in the deepest parts of him.   
The thoughts of running off ran wildly through his head, but he’d be found. One thing Ward always told him was that he could find him anywhere. Girls had run off before, and they’d been found, and the torture they endured after was horrific. At least, more horrific than it already was.   
Killing himself was an option, but he had never had the nerve to do it. Something like hope was in the dark places of his mind, afraid to show itself and be stamped out like everything else good seemed to be.   
He tarted on the latrine again, digging hard, cutting the earth with the blade, wishing it was Beaver and his father, Beaver, his father, Beaver, until he’d dug the hole deeper than it needed to me.   
His hands were sore, and he was filthy, but there was no time to take a bath in the creek that they said was a hundred feet or so in the trees. No, he had to rush to the “love shack” and have that creep fuck him. Each moment that ticked by, Alastar worried that Beaver would tell his secret.   
A couple years back, they’d found a pond off in a forest in what Ward said used to be Arizona. He’d been sent to get some buckets of water for the older women to wash the girls so Ward could play with them.   
He trudged down to the pond, hating that he was contributing to the way his father was with the captive females, but he had no other choice. As he approached the pond, he saw some of the men swimming, some bathing, and others just floating in it. It had been a rough, dirty few days of riding, and they were washing off the trip.  
Not that it was a surprise to him, as Alastar had known he preferred men in that way. He’d never looked at a woman the way his father and the others did, with that widening grin and lust filled eyes.   
No, he liked men, and that day, what was to be the worst of his life up to that point, he made the mistake of watching a little too long after setting the empty buckets to the ground. The men, most of them muscled and strong, their wet, naked bodies in the water, the sun gleaming off them like it was the pond itself.   
It was erotic, arousing, and he rubbed his dick through his pants, wishing more than ever that he could be with one, know what it felt to kiss one, touch them, run his hands over their lean bodies.   
Beaver had been watching him, and when confronted, Alastar had been able to do nothing except beg. If his father ever found out, he’d be literally skinned alive if he was lucky.   
So, he’d begun to blackmail him, taking what he wanted from Alastar, when he wanted it. That first time, his first time, he knew he’d never want sex again. It hurt, and Beaver hadn’t tried to be gentle. Alastar had bled for days after, so when he couldn’t use his ass, Beaver made Alastar suck his nasty dick.   
That had been two years, and it hadn’t gotten better or easier. He started using grease when he found out that, when his father was in a good mood, he sometimes greased his dick before sodomizing the female captives. Beaver didn’t always let him, but he’d put it in himself, so Beaver didn’t have any say.  
That was what he did that day, rushing to hide in a room in the house his father had chosen for them. It was a small room off what was once a kitchen, and he got the jar of grease he carried with him, dipping his finger into it and scooping up a glob, then lowering his pants so he could shove the finger inside his ass.   
He hated that it felt good, when he did that. He hated everything about sex, but he couldn’t stop his mind or body from craving it. He knew if he ever experienced it with someone he actually wanted to fuck, he’d probably love it, but that would never happen. It couldn’t.   
He walked to Beaver’s place like he was walking to his death. That’s what it felt like, only worse. Death ended, it was final. This just went on and on…  
As soon as he opened the door, he was grabbed, forced to his knees and then kicked facedown on the dirt floor. He knew it was his imagination, that the people that lived in the house had to have died long ago, and the scent of their rotting corpses was long spent, but he smelled rot all the same.   
Closing his eyes didn’t help the scent, it didn’t help anything. His pants were yanked down, his head held to that dirty floor and Beaver pushed his dick inside him in one thrust. He hated himself for it, but he yelped with the burn of it, the deep, constant ache of it.   
Beaver’s grunting was interspersed with coughing. He was another that smoked that stale tobacco shit, and his wheezing and coughing was disgusting, and prolonged the rape. He’d shove himself balls deep in Alastar’s ass as the coughing fit took him, he’d spit phlegm across the room, them start all over again.   
Sometimes, he could get through the whole ordeal without Beaver saying anything, but that was not happening on the floor of that old house. He pushed in his hardest and leaned over Alastar, grabbing a handful of his short hair and slamming his face into the dusty wood. “There’s my little whore. It’s been days, on the move, no place to play. My little whore with my cock in his loose ass.” The sound was stretched out, hissed, like the snake he was. Alastar felt the tears again, coming to his eyes, wondering if it would ever stop, if life had anything for him except pain.   
Beaver wasn’t hung or anything, but his bony fucking hips hurt like hell as he pounded inside him, and he didn’t let up again until another coughing fit struck him, and he pulled out of Alastar’s ass, slapping it hard, like he’d done something so great.   
Once he could take in a breath again, he whispered, “Don’t thank me, it was my pleasure.”  
Alastar got up, feeling the gross cum leaking from his ass. He pulled up his pants, and rushed out, before Beaver could brag on his sexual prowess more. He was heading for the creek, to wash the fucker off and out of him when he was struck with a rock in the head.   
The world got fuzzy for a moment, and he stumbled, catching himself barely before he fell. He looked around to see who’d thrown it, and there he was, sitting on his porch, his fucking throne like the king in some fairy story.   
Ward.   
“Where the fuck you been, boy?”  
It wasn’t like he could tell him. As he took his hand away from the spot on his head where the rock hit, he saw blood there, but less than he’d expected. “I dug the latrine, like you said, sir.”  
Sure enough, two of his slave girls were kneeling on either side of him, heavy collars on, which had leashes attached. Ward had the leashes laid over his thighs, knowing they’d never run for it, with him so close.   
Alastar willed his feet to move and he made it to the porch steps but didn’t ascend.   
“And so? You’re just takin’ a stroll around now?”  
“Of course not, sir. I was about to go wash up unless you needed something.”  
In the most mocking tone he could manage, Ward said, “I was gonna go wash up. What? You got a date?” He laughed at that, thinking no one would want Alastar. Which, besides Beaver and his blackmail, was true.   
“No, sir. Did you need me to do something?”  
The girls were both staring off, like their minds had left long ago, and only their bodies remained. He figured it was true. He felt that way every time Beaver touched him.   
“Go wash yourself and get back here. I want you to go with the others to find some game.”  
Hunting for deer or rabbit, whatever they could find, and Ward would take the first and most of it, giving the men the rest and whatever scraps were left went to the women. Even the ones who cooked it. They were all stick thin once they’d been there a month or more, and if he could do it without getting caught, he’d bring them food sometimes.   
That didn’t happen often. His father said that they had to be well guarded. He never knew what one of them would do if they could get loose. Good point, as far as Alastar was concerned. All of them would likely love to slit his throat and smile while the blood drained.  
The woods were where he liked to be. The gun in his hand was mostly forgotten as he and a few others took off to find game. They weren’t quiet. Not one forest he’d been to was quiet. If there was no insects or wildlife to make noise, the wind in the leaves made plenty of sound. He could hear around it, though, to the smallest things. He’d learned to block out the ambient noises as a kid, working his way deeper into the heart of the land.   
Each step he took, he heard the crunching of old leaves, the snapping twigs, the rustle of the very soil under his boot. That, however, was all in the back, a chorus to the lead singer, like the music some of the men listened to when they could find a generator that they would convert to use the vegetable oil they used in their four-wheelers.  
The singer, that was the living thing in the woods to him. The sound of the hooves walking through the trees, and he heard it louder the closer he got to it. He had a knack that some of the men commended him on, which was a rare occurrence and never done in front of Ward.   
He heard it, four legged things just to the right of him. Crouching, he let the sound of the wind blend away and focused on the deer, a buck by the sound, heavy and full of meat. It was walking toward him, unafraid of humans, those creatures that had managed to almost completely kill themselves off, and as soon as he saw it, it’s soft brown eyes, he lifted his rifle and shot.   
The deer went down, and then the cacophony of the running men drowned out every other sound the forest made. After one pat on the back from one of the older men, he helped to drag the nice sized buck back to the encampment and to the bottom of the stairs where his father still sat.   
“Nice one, boys. Get the old bitches to get it cleaned and cooked. We’re having a feast tonight!”  
While everyone scurried to run and get the older women, the ones that weren’t worth raping in his father’s eyes, he left to the creek to finally wash Beaver off himself. The water was icy, like it had melted only hours before, but it felt good, taking his mind from everything else.   
The water, so crisp and clear beneath him, showed the rocks where he stood, shining smoothed out by years of the water running over them. He knew that, not from schooling, but from a huge canyon they’d gone to, far as the eye could see. One of the men remarked how the Colorado River had made it, the water alone cutting the rock and forming the canyon. Alastar thought he was kidding, but a few of the others agreed.   
Water could cut through rock, but he couldn’t get away from his father. It didn’t seem fair in the scheme of things, but it was life, he thought.   
Once he was washed, as clean as having only water could do, he dressed in a clean pair of pants he found in one of the last places they’d camped, and left his shirt off, though he hated doing that in front of anyone. There was a big scar on his back, and he felt as if everyone stared at it whenever he was walking through their camps.   
That probably wasn’t true, but it was the way he felt.   
The feast was great, and he got enough to fill him, for once. All they ever had was meat, as they never stayed anywhere long enough to grow vegetables. One of the women used to find wild vegetables and cook them, but Ward broke her arm for it, saying they weren’t a bunch of vegans. Alastar wondered what a vegan was, but whatever it was, Alastar knew his father hated them.   
A screech rang out over the camp and the men sitting around the fire all stood at once, but Ward was soon walking toward them, laughter marking his path. “Stupid bitch,” he commented as he grabbed a bone from one of the men and gnawed the rest of the meat from it.   
“What’d ya do to her, Ward?” One of the men asked, his laughter joining Ward’s making Alastar sick.   
“Broke all the fingers on her right hand when she tried to push me away. All I was doing was throat fuckin’ her. She should be grateful I wasn’t ramming my fist up her ass like last time. Fuckin’ bitches are never happy, man.”  
The men all joined in the reverie of Ward’s vileness, and Alastar had to play along. His father’s eyes always sought him out when he did things like that, looking to assure Alastar was like the rest of them. Cruel, abusive, heartless.   
He didn’t know why he wasn’t. It was a fucking mystery to him, why he felt anything for anyone. He was like no one else in camp, and he knew it. It went far beyond the fact he was a faggot, like his father liked to call the men as a derision. A cocksucker, fudge packer, he had a million jabs that he threw at the men when they pissed him off.   
No, Alastar knew it wasn’t that, and he’d stopped trying to figure it out long ago. He was like the women in the cages, stuck and unable to run. Most of the time, he kept his head down and tried to go unnoticed. It wasn’t always possible, but at times he could. He’d go into the trees when there were some, and think on things, things he wished he could see or do.   
He’d take old magazines, looking at the pictures of handsome and beautiful people, smiling, bright, white teeth gleaming on the glossy pages. Unable to read, he couldn’t find out their names or why they were in the small books, but he could imagine their lives. Love, laughter, maybe tears, but not as many as he saw daily.   
The following day, he helped build the latrines with some old wood they found in a shed behind one of the houses. It wasn’t pretty, and the nails were mostly rusted, but it was holding. A stiff puff of air would likely push it over, so Alastar knew he’d be shitting in the woods until they moved.   
One of the first jobs done when they got to a new area was to secure the women. There were twelve, two that were Ward’s personal property and another ten the men shared. Ward messed with all of them if he wanted, but he kept at least two and as many as four to himself. He bragged that he liked going into a pussy that wasn’t already full of another man’s scum.  
Three of the women were pregnant, which sickened Alastar. When they had babies, if they were boys, they were killed, and the girls were raised to be slaves too. The older women took care of them, kept them quiet and contained in one house while the women were in Ward’s place.   
They were chained in one room until enough rooms, or cells, could be made. Windows were boarded, doors set with heavy locks. At first, the women were all in one room, but Ward liked to separate them as much as he could. He said it broke them faster that way, dealing with isolation.   
He was an expert at breaking people, that was sure. Alastar was never asked to help with the cells, as Ward said he was pathetic, and he didn’t trust him enough to assure the women were contained. For once, his father’s complete lack of confidence in him was welcome.   
While everyone else was working at Ward’s house, he was sent out to hunt on his own. He followed the stream that wove off to the north of the town, watching for trails that deer made to get to water, their dung, anything that would point him to the best game.   
The stream widened the farther he went, and looked inviting, the water so clear, the sun shining on the rocks. He dipped his feet in after an hour or so, knowing he’d get beat for not finding game, but he rarely got those times to himself, to sit, and feel something so good as cold, fresh water running wildly over his feet.   
When he’d had enough, his feet numb from the cold, he slid them back into his boot and headed back, luckily finding an older doe munching grass before he got to the camp. She wasn’t huge, but enough, and he could drag it easily himself.   
No reward, no pat on the back, but at least he didn’t get beaten. The feast went on long into the night, but he wasn’t a part of it. After another trip to Beaver’s “love shack”, he found a clump of juniper trees to hide in so he could sleep, surrounded by their scent, their darkness.   
As he drifted off, feeling his ass aching and his eyes burning from tears he refused to shed, he wished for something better. Anything better.


	3. Chapter 3-Daya

Daya  
As he watched his father walk over to him, Daya’s gut got a knot in it, and he pretended to be busily fixing his sarong.   
“Daya,” his father started, the deepness of his voice booming into the knot in Daya’s stomach, making it tighter. He knew that tone, the one when a lecture was coming.   
“Yes?”  
They were alone, Daya on the bench behind the apple tree that Roger and Ginny usually took to make out where no one could watch them. His father sat next to him, and that tone didn’t change as he confessed, “Your mother told you that you’re learning our secrets.”  
“Yes, I am. I can’t say as I like them, but I guess I understand why all that is needed.”  
“If you only guess you know, then you don’t know. Daya, there are a lot of people still alive in the world. Some are good, like the people here, and some are terrible.”  
“Mom told me all this already. I get it.”  
He knew he sounded like a pouting child, but he felt that way, so it came out in his words.   
“I don’t think you do. Follow me, Daya. It’s time we start treating you like the man you’ve become.”  
As Julian rose from the bench, Daya, confused, stood with him, worried and curious all at once. He followed his father across the commons to the gate, a huge double gate that led outside and into the farms.   
Once Julian nodded to the gatekeeper, Marlon, the muscled man twisted the crank that pulled the gate open and Julian stepped outside, turning to his left, heading not to the farms, but away from them.   
His legs were long, and he walked fast, so Daya had to jog to keep up with him, breathless as he did that and started ticking off the many questions he had. “Where are we going? Why are you taking me out of the settlement? Why aren’t you telling me anything?”  
Finally, exasperated, his father stopped, Daya running into him as Julian laughed at him. “The first rule outside the fences is?”  
“Silence. Always silence.”  
“You do remember things we’ve taught you. I’m about to see what else you remember.”  
Daya only had more questions, but he did know the rules. Even the farmers, when they tended the fields, they were to be quiet. The mountains were alive with the predators that were growing in numbers every year. The black and brown bear alone were concerns for anyone outside the fences, but the real fear was from the mountain lion. There were a few solitary beasts that roamed close, hunting the smaller game that tried, and succeeded, to share in the crops the community planted.   
Then, of course, there were the fears of wanderers, coming on them unheard or seen, guns in hand. It was better to be the silent one, and hear them, and get away to warn the others.   
Julian led him deep into the aspen forest that was dense on the eastern side of the community. Once surrounded and in the trees, Julian stopped and turned to him, and in a low voice said, “Fight.”  
Daya didn’t understand for a split second, then it became clear, and he ducked just in time before Julian’s fist came at his head. He swung a leg around to drop his dad on his ass, but Julian was quicker, jumping to avoid it and swinging his own leg in a kick that caught Daya in the thigh.   
Daya came up fast, landing a punch to his father’s gut, then spinning in his own kick, but Julian deflected it, almost grabbing Daya’s long hair.   
After a few minutes, where they both got multiple hits on his opponent, Julian stopped the sparring. “Good. You’ve learned well. Let’s see what else you’ve learned.”  
He was almost afraid to see what his father meant as Julian moved again, but didn’t go far. Behind one of the aspen, Daya saw Julian pointing to a backpack, bulging and a solid wood staff, like Julian had taught him to fight with.   
“Dad? What’s going on?”  
“It’s time, son. Go on a quest. Take a couple of days and remember how to survive. To your mother’s people, they may have called this a vision quest. For us, it’s a test for you. You want to be treated like a man, and rightfully so. You’ve been sheltered, loved, protected, but you must learn to be a man now, fight for us, hunt for us. And more importantly, for yourself. You’ll always question things if you don’t live your life and find what you need to succeed.”  
The implication both thrilled and horrified him, and he did question it, if he was ready. “You mean…alone? You don’t let anyone be alone outside the fences!”  
“You’ll lead this place one day, Daya. It’s time you realize you can by taking your path and walking it alone, without anyone to protect you. Because, son, when you are leader, when you’re king, you will be the one who has to protect them.”  
That hit him in the chest and took his breath for a moment. “And…and mom?”  
Brushing a hand over his mouth to try to hide his momentary smile, he admitted to Daya, “Oh, she put up a little bit of a fuss about it. You’re her child, Daya, and she’s…she’s not quite ready to see you grow up. But I convinced her it’s time, so don’t get yourself hurt or she’ll likely kill my ass.”  
He joined with Julian in laughter over that, and together they gathered up the backpack and weapons. Julian had left him a quiver of arrows but no bow. He knew why, so he asked, “You want me to make a bow myself?”  
“You can. You’ve done in a million times.”  
“With help, and with supplies!”  
He cut himself off, realizing he was doing exactly what he was trying to prove he was past, being a whining child. He took the quiver and said a sincere, “Thank you, Dad.”  
His father’s eyes were wet with tears, and he was overcome with how much he loved the man. He went to him, hugging him around his thick waist, and he felt Julian’s arms wrap around him, as they both shared a moment.   
When he pulled back from the embrace, he cleared his throat from the enormous lump there, that knot having traveled up from his gut, and he told his father, “You…I just want to thank you. You’ve been such a good dad. I think one of the reasons I want to grow up and start doing what you do is because I want to be like you. And Mom.”  
“Your mother knows you can do this. She’s just your mom, and she is scared. It’s hard for her to admit to herself that you’re a man now. She’d keep you in a little box to watch over you forever if she could, but she knows you’d hate that.”  
“I know.”  
“No, you don’t. When you were a baby and she held you, carried you with her everywhere to build our community, you weren’t alone for more than a few minutes. That’s how much she worried about her tiny baby in this new, and sometimes very bad world.”  
Daya didn’t know that. There was so much his parents wouldn’t say about his birth, his childhood up to the point he started remembering for himself. He didn’t understand why they had separate bedrooms, or they didn’t show real affection. He had always been afraid to ask, and after he grew up, he didn’t want to pry.   
“I’ll come home, in two days, safe and in one piece. I swear. I won’t let Mom kill you.”  
He got a heavy smack on the back for that and Julian thanked him, and said, “Good.”  
While he watched his father walked away, taking several glances back, Daya felt free for the first time in his life, but it came with a price. The loneliness settled in immediately, and he tried to shake it off, knowing it was stupid.   
He’d been raised with people, always there, always watching him, so the new feeling of freedom was strange. Not having to hurry home so he wouldn’t be caught breaking the rules, no worries about his friends getting into trouble. It was freeing, but frightening.   
He gathered the quiver, staff and backpack, heading east. He knew how to travel, had been taught that early on. Follow the sun. Whether moving east and west or crossing that, it was the one thing that could keep him from getting lost.   
The east held another town down the highway, long dead, buildings in terrible disrepair, but he thought it would be a good place to start his journey. Long ago foraged for supplies, there’d be nothing there he could use, but he may find a roof for the night, and for the yards that still held plants the deer liked to feed from, he may be able to go back to New Day with food for his people.   
It took him hours to get there, as the sun began to dip behind the mountains west of him. The first place he came to in the little town was a red brick building, downed fence around it, lots of doors and windows that were mostly broken. He stepped though one of the doors that was hanging on one hinge and there was a long white hallway stretching out before him.   
The sun was still bright enough to see down the hall, and there were doors on either side that had faired better than the outer ones, most still hung on both hinges and closed. He went to one, opening it carefully, his knife at the ready in case someone was already camped there.   
When he got inside, he saw tables with small chairs, all pointing to a long wall with a green section on it, white marks that may have been words.   
It was then he knew what the building was. With a map of what used to be the United States on the wall, a flag of that old country in the corner, a board a few faded, dusty papers pinned there, he knew he’d found a school.   
He’d gone to school when he was younger, but it was nothing like the building he started to explore. Tiny desks, books that had fattened from moisture, bathrooms with five or six stalls. He thought he could hear the chatter, the laughter of the children as they played, learned, and grew up with many others just like themselves.   
He found a room with cabinets, a couple of tables, one overturned. There was a couch there, and it wasn’t in too bad of shape. He dusted it off a little and sat there, contemplating things.   
Where he’d go the next day, his first full day of freedom, of manhood. He’d never traveled far, never allowed to go with the scouts that were sometimes gone a week. To go, find people to bring back to the community, or more food, or some other hidden treasure, it was all he wanted. He would be praised for coming back at all, safe and sound, but he wanted to be a hero. To come with something the people could use, and would be happy for, that was what he wanted to do.   
But two days wasn’t enough. They’d searched the immediate area several times. He’d have to go a lot farther to bring something great, and he didn’t have the time. He’d go back in two days, empty handed or not. To do anything else would worry his parents and they’d likely send half the community to search for him.  
He lay on the couch and slept the night, his buzzing mind finally letting him sleep. The night was still heavy when he woke, his legs aching a bit from the long walk. He stretched the moment he stood up, and then grabbed his pack, hoping he had some jerky inside, that they hadn’t wanted him to totally forage for his food.   
Sure enough, there was a small bag, and he got a piece out, chewing on it as he packed up to head out into the early day. One more look around the school, and he left the way he’d gone in, glancing back once to say goodbye to it.   
Many thoughts about that had had him restless the night before, the thoughts of all the children that had gone there, eager to learn, to be with other kids, and they’d all died. His mother had told him once that in her old life, she’d been a schoolteacher.   
He’d imagined that, her standing in front of all the kids, filling their minds with knowledge. Even with everything she knew she’d had to teach them, about fighting, hunting, all that, she’d always assured them that learning math and science were as important. Those that apprenticed with the doctor, they ate it all up like air. The others, they didn’t feel the need of it, and it would make his mother angry as a cat.   
The town was small, and he passed through it in minutes. There were homes off to either side of the road, not that there was much of a road, but what was left made a trail for him to follow.   
Then, there it was. School, what he’d learned there, trails, roads, poems, it all clicked together in his mind suddenly and he remembered a poem Justin, their teacher for a few years, had taught them.   
It was by some man, Frost, yeah, Robert Frost, and he was talking about the road less traveled. Daya stopped and looked north. There were other roads, roads that took off into more canyons, he knew, and he wondered how many houses were left unexplored.   
He wondered how many times the scouts had left the road. How many times they’d traveled off the road, making all the difference, as the poem said. Probably a lot, sure, but that didn’t mean they found what he could find.   
North, up into places he’d never seen. It was the mountains, so not much changed as he went. Hills to climb, a few cliffs to scale or go around, but he was feeling better with each step.   
He stopped, listening, hearing a hawk someone east of him, screaming as it dove for his prey. He noticed something else, a blurred movement off in the trees next to the meadow where he stood. He turned there taking his knife out again, but he didn’t need it. A mountain lion was moving slowly, not noticing him. Wind was blowing east, so it hadn’t smelled him, but he didn’t worry a lot. Julian and his mother taught him that the lions were only a threat if they were very hungry or surprised.   
He watched the slinking of it, from tree to tree, casually along some trail of its own making. He thought it was a female, the smaller of the big cats, and she was beautiful.   
She stopped, turning her head to him, and he nodded to her, then lowered his eyes, not wishing to be confrontational. When his eyes moved back to where she had been, she was gone.   
He walked for a couple more miles, through forests of fir and over arroyos that left deep recesses in the perfect earth. For his lunch, he hunted a small jackrabbit, making a small fire that could be easily put out when he was done. The smoke blew to him, as it always seemed to, and he smiled, thinking of his mother’s words when it happened, “Smoke is drawn to beauty, Daya. Even the smoke knows you’re beautiful.”  
As he watched, he let the bone fall from his hand. Another rabbit, and another, and it gave him an idea for the community that he thought was great. If he returned with nothing except one idea, it was better than nothing.  
He left the entrails and the skin for the scavengers and headed off again, watching the sun to keep from going in circles. He was in strange territory, no map had been drawn for it. It was easy, his mother warned, for people to get lost, and walk in circles for days in the wilderness, succumbing to the elements or predators. By predators, Daya always knew she meant man far more than bear or lion.  
There was a big buck Elk grazing in another meadow, but he was far to large for him to kill and try to return with it. He waved a hand at him as he passed, barely being noticed.   
He drank sparingly from his canteen, unsure when he’d find good water again. Rain catchers were the best, as they used at the community, fresh from the clean sky, but they utilized the creeks for bathing and other needs, and for drinking water as well, on those long summers when it rained less.  
He heard another creek as he made it over a smaller hill, climbing carefully down the rocky northern side. The day was warm, with his walking and the cold water would do wonders for him to wash his face and take a break.   
As he near it, however, he heard movement in the water. Bears drank and bathed in the water as humans did, so he proceeded with as much caution as he could, walking silently. Like his mother had taught him, he watched for branches and twigs that could snap underfoot, announcing his presence.   
The smell of the running water was so tempting, he got closer, eager to take a sip that didn’t taste like metal, from his canteen. Behind one tree, then another, he moved slowly, then stopped when he saw the sun glinting off the water in the recession of the creek bed.   
Peering around the trunk of the elm, he had to slap a hand over his mouth to keep from gasping out loud. In the creek, there wasn’t a bear, there was a man, naked, bathing, and possibly the most beautiful person he’d ever seen in his life.


	4. Chapter 4- Alastar

Alastar  
Wanting as far and as fast as he could go, Alastar took a rifle, told some people he was going hunting and left before his father could tell him again to go fuck one of the women.   
It wasn’t simply that they were unwilling, that they were basically zombies, so checked out of their own minds, but he wasn’t attracted to women. He could barely touch them when his father told him to fuck them, which got him called a dirty faggot a lot, but he couldn’t do it.   
Sometimes he’d pretend to, and that would appease the old man for a while. The women, well, of those that did ever speak, they wouldn’t tell him one way or another if Alastar had done anything to them.   
Then, as he had gotten out of that predicament, Beaver found him, and forced him to the “love shack” and had a good time at Alastar’s expense. Another dirty coupling on the floor of the place, hacking, coughing, getting fucked before he’d applied the grease inside his ass.   
It was heavy, the rifle in his hand. Again, he thought about using it on himself. No one would miss him, especially his father, but then he’d win. Another victory for the man who bragged he never lost a fight. The one that would kill and rape and bring pain without a second thought.   
Alastar didn’t want him to have another victory. So, he carried the gun and got the idea of suicide out of his mind for the moment, desperate to get to the creek and wash the feel of Beaver from him.   
He followed the creek down a ways, taking the long way. The hunting could take hours, and that was how long he planned to be gone for once.   
The farther away he got from the encampment, the better he felt. It was like a dark cloud lived there, choking him, and only when he left could be breathe. If it kept up, he’d be hacking and choking like Beaver, and he wouldn’t need to smoke cigarettes or cigars.   
He’d slung a pack over his shoulder before leaving, his one other pair of pants and shirt. He never carried much. There was no use, if Ward saw him washing them, he’d be called a woman, and there were no worse names he could call Alastar than that, in his mind. Ward treated women worse than bugs, so being called one meant you were lower than a bug.   
He took the clean clothes out when he got to the spot in the creek that was a little wider. There was even a nice flat rock he could sit on to wash his legs and relax. The water was freezing, but he didn’t fully submerge, and he liked the tingling way it made him feel. Like the coldness was cleansing him of all the dirt from his group.   
Once in the water, he shivered a while, wrapping his arms around himself instinctually, but that didn’t last. He lounged after a few minutes, stretching his arms out on the side of the creek, like he was king of the world instead of whatever the hell he was.   
He’d stolen a bar of soap from Beaver when he wasn’t looking. He never used them anyway, by the smell of him. He wet the soap, running it over his body, washing off Beaver, the dirt from his floor, the stink of the cells of the women when he’d been told to fuck them and cleared their shit buckets instead.   
The bastard wouldn’t even let them go to the latrines. Too risky.   
Pushing those thoughts aside for the moment, he wanted to enjoy the water, even when it was shrinking his balls. Cold, invigorating, alive, that is what it made him feel like. The soap, the smell of it clean and a little flowery, it made him close his eyes, picturing a field of sunflowers he’d seen once on a move.   
There were lots of wildflowers in the mountains, but not a field, miles wide, like when they’d traveled south. It was yellow as far as the eyes could see. He could have stared at that forever. Fields of bright flowers, whose faces follow the sun.   
Where his seemed to follow the shadows, where the darkest things lay in wait for him.   
Dragging him from his thoughts of flowers and lights, as he ran the smooth, slick bar of soap over his shoulders, elbow high as he reached, moving to his upper back, he ran it over the bumps of the scar.   
Immediately he was taken back to that afternoon, maybe two hours earlier. Beaver, slithering over to him, ordering him to his place, and he went. He always went.   
When he got there, Beaver had ordered him to push down his pants and get on the floor, as usual. Still hurting from the previous encounter the day before, Alastar winced, thinking of having that thin dick bumping around his ass again.   
“Be a friend, Beaver, let me just suck you off.”  
That tongue, darting out from his lips as he grinned. It was disgusting. “You sure do have a purty mouth. You know what that line’s from?”  
The first thing he thought was a book, then he remembered, though Beaver could read, he never did. “No.”  
“This movie, came out, shit, twenty years before I was born. These fellas grabbed some nice city boys and did to them what I do to you. Of course, they made one of them make noises, like a pig.”  
As his own mind had screamed at him to keep his mouth shut, he heard himself say it. “Twenty years before you? They had movies that old?”  
His face was grabbed, Beaver’s bony fingers digging into his cheeks. “Smart mouth on you, boy.” He made Alastar take off all his clothes, mostly to humiliate him. He knew Alastar hated being naked in front of him. How that was worse than the fucking, he didn’t know. Being exposed, being vulnerable, it was worse. “Get your fuckin’ face on the floor and get that ass up for me.”  
He’d made sure it would hurt, taking a dirty rag and wrapping it around his fingers to jam up inside him, cleaning away any of the grease Alastar may have used to help. That had hurt worse than the fucking, and when Beaver was done with him, he spit on Alastar’s face. “No grease next time, neither, boy. You’ll learn one way or the other.”  
He kept a hand on Alastar’s back, pressing him to the floor as his words slithered over him. “That ugly fucking scar. I remember when you got that. You was just a kid. Little thing, always scared, shaking. Your daddy wasn’t all that nice with you. Quiet, though, real quiet, until one day, you let out this scream, like some rat was biting through your balls.”  
Hearing it again, with the detail, Alastar closed his eyes, and he could see it, in his mind. He didn’t remember the incident, but he’d heard about it, through whispers, at first, then in full blown descriptiveness from Beaver.   
“Yeah, we all came runnin’. Ward, he told us to back off, that he’d accidentally burned you, ‘cept he was smiling. Drunk as a skunk, sure, but I think he knew what he was doin’. See, you had this thing there, can’t remember now. It wasn’t big, a mole or something. Grossed him out, I’m guessin’. Anyway, he’d taken a log outta the fire and set it right there, and you let out a wail that they could probably hear for miles. Pretty funny.”  
Yeah, he thought, funny that a father could permanently scar his kid.   
Beaver let him up after story time was over, and he rushed out, keeping tears away, again. He hid behind one of the other dead houses for a while, swiping at the tears that did come. That’s when he had to get out. He got a gun from Skull, a mean skunk with white blond hair and no teeth, letting him and the others around him know he was going hunting.   
That was the one thing he could do, when he couldn’t take it anymore. He’d never been praised for it, but he was a good hunter.   
Letting the soap drop back in the water, he realized his teeth were chattering from the cold. He knew he should get out of the water and dry himself, but Alastar simply stood cupping water and pouring it over his hair and face.   
As the warmer air hit him, he wasn’t shivering any longer, but the water on his legs, up to his knees, the almost casual current lulled him while flowing there.   
Always alert to sounds, he tried to focus on the water, the way it sounded, like easy, sweet music. That didn’t last, however. He heard the snap of a twig much too close for comfort. Pretending he didn’t hear it, he stepped easily out of the water, grabbing his pants from the rock he’d left them on and glanced over to his rifle, which was about six feet away from him.   
Another twig snapped, and Alastar got his pants over his hips, then shrugged his shirt on, right before he saw the flash of colorful fabric as whoever it was started to run.   
Leaving the gun, thinking it was a woman, Alastar took off after her, and he was fast. He’d always been fast and a good hunter, the only two things he knew about himself that were in the plus column.   
The girl in front of him ran fat too, though, her long, black hair swinging, flying behind her, as she tried to dart into the trees. Alastar was on her, however, and he didn’t know why he’d followed. It was the best thing in the world for her to be running the other way, but instinct had taken over and all Alastar could think of was to give chase.   
Then, she was gone, like she disappeared in with the trees. Alastar stopped cold, grabbing onto the trunk of an aspen, his head jerking from side to side, eyes everywhere, looking for her.   
Then, he saw something coming for his face, a long, dark colored stick and he moved back just in time to keep from getting bashed in the face with it, and it deflected on the tree he was standing by.   
He swung himself around the tree and was shocked to see that it wasn’t a girl, it was a man, someone probably close to his age, a long staff in his hands that he was twirling, ready to strike out with him again, so Alastar ducked behind the same tree, running back to where he’d left the rifle, but it was his turned to be chased.   
He heard the crunching behind him, the man’s feet on the ground, rushing, ever faster, the blur of the world in his peripheral. The creek was getting closer, but the guy was matching his steps, he could feel him he was so close, so Alastar had to think quickly, and he dove onto the ground, landing on his stomach, rolling to the side as the staff came down, right where his head had been.   
Alastar grabbed the man’s leg through his skirt and pulled him down, making him land hard, but that didn’t faze him a bit, though it did cause him to lose his staff for a moment. Alastar took advantage of that, seeing a rock and grabbing it, smashing it against the man’s thigh, the only thing he could reach as he was scrambling to get to the staff.   
The guy let out a wail, but recovered fast, leaving the staff and jumping instead onto Alastar, giving him a blow to his jaw that made him dizzy for a few seconds, but not long enough. They rolled on the ground, one on top, then the other, punches flying, nails digging into flesh.   
He grabbed a handful of the guys long, thick hair and gave a hearty yank, getting on top one last time, punching him in the side of the head. He thought it was hard enough, but he was tiring from the fight, and it didn’t seem to bother his opponent all that much. He finally fell off to the side and breathlessly asked, “Did you have enough?”  
The guy, who he’d thought was a girl, smiled over at him, and that disarmed him completely.   
“Are you serious?”  
“Well, yeah,” he said, moving away, catching his breath in case they were going to fight some more. “I won, right?”  
Watching him getting up from the dirt, he dusted his skirt off and threw his long hair behind his shoulders. “How do you figure that?”  
“I was on top last! I hit you last!”  
They were facing off again, the man’s green eyes looking into his, and he felt it bubbling up from his chest, at the same time he watched it emitting from his opponent, exhausted, roaring laughter.   
The guy in the dress doubled over with it, and Alastar fell back on his butt, pointing to the man in the dress, laughing at his laughter, the tear rolling down his dusted cheeks. When they could both manage to stifle their giggles, they were sitting, facing each other, and the man held out his hand. “I’m Daya.”  
No one had ever offered to shake his hand before, so it was a strange feeling when it was happening, but he did shake the guy’s hand. “That’s your name?”  
“Yeah. What’s yours?”  
“Alastar. What are you doing out here in a dress?”  
He saw the guy’s eyes, green eyes, like his own, darken considerably. “It’s not a dress, it’s a sarong. Do you want to fight again?”  
Holding up both hands in surrender, he said, “No, I’m done. I’m tired. We’re too equally matched. You’re a good fighter.”  
Smiling once again, Daya took the compliment with humility, something else Alastar wasn’t used to. “Thank you very much. You are too.”  
The sarong open to Daya’s thigh, he found himself letting his eyes moving up before he caught himself. “So, really, why a sa-...sa-…?”  
“Sarong? I don’t know. It’s more comfortable than pants, and more colorful. I like color.”  
Alastar didn’t understand this strange creature at all, so he steered the conversation back to something he could understand. “Who taught you to fight?”  
Daya smiled and sat up a little straighter. “My parents, but especially my mom. I don’t tell my father, but she’s still a better fighter.”  
Alastar thought he heard wrong. “Did you say your mom? A woman? Taught you to fight?”  
He couldn’t imagine it, but Daya nodded a little, then cocked his head to the side. “Yeah, she’s fierce. All the women…wait, I really shouldn’t…”  
“Talk about your people? Yeah, I’m not supposed to either.”  
Daya glanced the way of the creek, and wondered aloud, “So, you’re not alone?”  
“Like I said, I shouldn’t tell you that, unless you want to exchange information and take our chances.”  
“True, okay, no talk of others.”  
He figured they should get up and go their separate ways, but he found he didn’t want to. Daya, he was so different than anyone he’d ever met. And… he hated to admit it, even to himself, he was so handsome, even with a skirt. “You’re nice.”  
Daya’s bright smile, showing white, clean teeth made Alastar want to hide his own. He tried to clean them when he could, but no one else at the camp had, so he wasn’t sure he had ever done it right. “Thank you. You are too.”  
“I am? I wouldn’t know,” he said before he thought it out, and wished he could take it back. “I mean, no one’s ever said that to me.”  
“Are you usually mean?”  
It was a question to be considered, for sure. If he had been, he hadn’t meant to, but mean was part of being with Ward and his group. “I don’t want to be,” is what he settled on, hoping that was enough.   
“Me either. I like your eyes.”  
He looked down, letting his lids slide over them, and he felt his face get hot, like when he was angry, but he wasn’t angry at all. “Yours too. They kinda look like mine, but not really.”  
“Yeah, I know.”  
It was such a simple exchange of words, but he wasn’t used to conversations at all. The men in his camp talked at each other, not to one another. “Daya?”  
“Yeah?”  
“I gotta go soon, but…I know I can’t ask where you live or anything, but…”  
Daya reached for him and touched his hand. “I’d like to talk to you again too. And I promise, I will never ask about your people, if you don’t ask about mine.”  
He had the most intense urge to lean in, to feel what it would be like to kiss Daya, but he knew that would likely start another fight, and he had to save his energy to hunt and get back before he got another beating. “I promise too.”  
They stood, and again Daya held out his hand to Alastar, who took it, shaking with the man in the dress, and being happier than he could remember being. “I’ll see you again. Tomorrow? Same time?”  
“I’ll try. I can’t always get away,” he admitted, but he thought about never seeing Daya again and it tore him apart inside, so he said, “But I will. Same time.”  
He watched Daya gather his staff and a knife he hadn’t seen and head off to the south. Glancing back once, Daya waved to him, then started to run, disappearing into the trees once again.


	5. 5-Daya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one will be the last I post here, as I'm not getting any views except five so far. It's not worth putting them all up, as it takes time. I will for sure finish if I know someone is enjoying it, or wants me to finish. If you come across this story in the future and want me to finish, let me know. Otherwise, it's been fun. Kisses.

Daya  
Daya watched him until he was gone in the shelter of the trees. One day was mostly through, and he had to be back in another, but there was a person he wanted to know, to see again and again.   
It wasn’t simply that he was beautiful, and he was. It was that Daya hadn’t met anyone from outside the community, except for those taking refuge there. They had stories, good and bad, of the outside world that made him crave the sight of it. Mostly, though, they spoke about how grateful they were to find New Day.  
There was someone who lived with another group, and he lived in another place. Daya made camp that night, but kept his fire small, eating the rest of the rabbit. All eh could think of while he stared into the fire was how it must be to live with others, away from the people he’d known all his life.   
It didn’t pass his attention that Alastar didn’t seem really happy. He had a bruise on his face, fading, and another on his neck. That didn’t mean anything in particular, he roamed the wild, hunting, like his people did. He could have gotten that little scar over his left brow any number of ways.   
Resisting the urge to go into the night and search out Alastar’s group, Daya instead settled in to try to think of a way to stay longer. He would ask his father, of course. Julian knew he was becoming a man, as Teresa did, but Julian understood better. He felt Daya’s need to explore and discover the world.  
All the things he’d read about in books, so many probably long gone, burned or destroyed by the remaining people or time itself. There were other things, however, things that were wonderous that humans couldn’t destroy. The Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, The huge buildings of New York and Chicago. Daya fell asleep wondering about these things and thought to ask Alastar if he’d seen any of them.   
When he woke, he was as enthusiastic to learn everything he could from Alastar. They weren’t set to meet until late in the day, so he busied himself with hunting small game, for himself and to return to New Day victoriously.  
After three rabbits and two while turkey, about all he could carry without tiring himself, he hung his trophies in the trees, hoping a bear wouldn’t find them before he returned, and he set off to meet Alastar again.   
He was smiling the entire way, thinking of his lips, how they curved up in shy ways, and then, the feeling of them rolling on the ground, during the fight. Daya had felt his erection heavily.   
He stopped, smile gone, staff falling to the grass with a soft thump. “Damn, Daya, you like him. You like him, like him.” The revelation was so heavy that he sat right down next to the fallen staff, his hand landing on it. “You like him,” he whispered, and a strange feeling came over him. One he hadn’t had since he’d had his crazy crush on his best friend.   
Think rationally, he chided himself. Alastar, after all, was the first boy his age, or at least he thought Alastar was his age, that he’d known outside the community. Of course, that was exciting, and he’d have feelings about it.   
Then, his mind crept back to Alastar’s face, his lashes lying over his reddening cheeks, and further, his mind went to the bath he was taking in the creek. The water running over him, thin but lanky and beautiful.   
Standing once more, he dusted off his sarong, smiling at that as well. Alastar had never seen one before, thought it was a dress, and there was something sweet about that, to Daya. He wasn’t making fun, like some of the men at New Day did, before Teresa put them back in line. No, he was curious, and he was curious about everything Daya said, just like Daya wanted to know about him and his life.   
It all could be the newness of it all, but he didn’t care. If he made nothing more than a new friend, a friend was always welcome in his life.   
He waited a long time near the creek. Worried, distressed that Alastar wouldn’t show, he kept from looking for him, but barely. He didn’t know what he could be walking into.   
Finally, Alastar came, though Daya’s smile as seeing his approach died as he saw Alastar’s face.   
He had a bruise on his cheekbone and his lip was cut. Dried blood was caked under one nostril, and he was limping a little. Daya went to him, but Alastar flinched back and held up a hand. “Don’t fucking touch me.”  
“I’m…I’m sorry, Alastar. What happened to you? Were you attacked?”  
Alastar moved past him and sat against a tree. He was staring at the sky, tears flowing down his pale and bruised cheeks. “No, not exactly and I don’t want to talk about it, so don’t, please.”  
Daya wanted to talk about it. Daya wanted to find out the cruel thing that had done it to Alastar, but he sat instead, close to him. “I’m sorry you’re hurt. I can get some herbs and help the bruises and cuts.”  
“Nah, I’m okay. I’m used to it.”  
“Used to it? This happens a lot?”  
He could see Alastar struggling, gnawing on his bottom lip, hands clenched in fists on his lap. “I’m sick of it, Daya, and I know this isn’t your problem. I don’t want your help, no, but just…be with me. Sit here with me and tell me stories? Something nice and good. You don’t have to tell me about your people, I remember our pact. Just…something nice?”  
Knowing already that he’d do anything for his new friend, he thought hard, to some memory that he had that wouldn’t involve anyone else at New Day. When he thought of one, he reached for Alastar’s hand, covering it with his own. “I have something. When I was learning to fight, I got a bruise. It was terrible, big and ugly on my leg, but I didn’t want to tell anyone. I thought it would make me seem like I was weak.  
“I wore pants that whole couple weeks, and I hated it. I wasn’t used to it, so I’d take a lot of baths, and when I was in the baths, I would dream. I dreamed about being on an ocean, sailing, and I’d gotten the bruise from the rigging on the boat. I dreamed I saw dolphins and whales and I would spear them and was able to feed all the people I’d meet on my journey.”  
Alastar was silent for a long time, but his tears dried and no more were shed. Turning his hand over, he held Daya’s, until his cold had was warmed. “I used to have dreams like that. Well, not just like that. I don’t know what a dolphin is or a whale. But I’d dream of places far away too. Where I could laugh and run, be free.”  
“You’re not free?”  
“Not really,” he confessed, his voice hoarse with sadness. “But we were talking about happy things.”  
He’d heard of heartbreak, and had seen it, when someone in the community died, their closest loved ones would mourn for weeks and months, crying, keeping alone. His broke in that moment, for his new friend. His new friend that wasn’t free.   
“There was a rabbit I followed once. I was learning to hunt then, and I was taught to follow them, learn their movements, their ways. I follow one that seemed to know I was there. He took me all over the place, and then he’d duck in a hole, and I’d wait at that hole, and before I knew it, he was staring at me from the ground. He’d gotten out of another hole and came back to make fun of me.”  
Alastar laughed then, and let go of his hand, turning to face him. “You are so strange to me. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that bad.”  
“I didn’t take it badly. I know I’m different.”  
“You are. So different than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. Your eyes, they are like almost the same color as mine, but yours look so different. They…they shine. Like, like you’re always smiling, even when your mouth isn’t.”  
It was overwhelming, the urge to kiss him, and Daya moved so quickly, he didn’t have time to talk himself out of it. He touched his lips briefly to Alastar’s, then again, but the second time, he stayed there, pressing them to his, his breath getting shut in his throat as his entire body went numb and on fire at once.   
It was something like flying, though he’d never flown. He’d imagined it, though, that weightless feeling, wind and clouds and sky stretching out around him, but holding him safe.   
Alastar kissed him back, pushing his lips to Daya’s hard, and his hands cupped Daya’s face, keeping him there.   
Then, it changed so suddenly, Daya was caught off-guard and unbalanced. Alastar pushed him away, got to his feet and started to pace before Daya could take a breath.   
“That was wrong! Wrong! Men don’t kiss other men; they don’t do that!”  
Daya grabbed his arms, then let go immediately. “I’m sorry! I should’ve, I don’t know, asked first or something!”  
“Asked?” He was screeching, and Daya wanted to comfort him, but touching didn’t seem to be the way to do it. Then Alastar went on a rant that had Daya stepping away, shocked. “You don’t ask! When the hell do you ask? You take, but you take from women, and if you take from a guy, a guy who hates you, a guy who wants to kill you, then you’re the worst sort of scumbag! No! No, that’s not the worst! You take from women, that’s the worst, but it’s what you’re supposed to want!”  
The tears were back and Alastar was trying to yank out his own hair, doubled over with pain and Daya was crying as well, hurting for the man he’d only met a day before.   
“It’s all so bad, it’s all bad,” Alastar cried, then his eyes found Daya again. “How are you not bad?”  
Daya shrugged, not knowing what to say. Then, it came to him. “I’ve never taken, Alastar. When we were fighting, I felt…well, I thought you liked me.”  
“I do,” he groaned. “I am a fucking freak, and if anyone knew, they’d…and here you are, and you kissed me? Why the hell did you kiss me?”  
“Because I like you too, Alastar. But, but we don’t have to kiss for me to like you. I don’t need anything from you. I want to be your friend, that’s all, if that is what you want. I’d never, I would never hurt you. I swear it, Alastar.”  
Watching his struggle, all of it painful, Daya was lost for what to do. then Alastar sat straight down, like he was giving up. Joining him, Daya kept his distance but spoke intimately. “I like boys, and…and where I come from, it’s not wrong or bad. There are a few gay couples there.”  
“Don’t tell me that. If I told anyone, Daya, you can’t trust me! Don’t trust anyone!”  
“I trust you, Alastar, and it’s stupid and I don’t know why. Anyway, they are in love, and they are mostly happy. It’s like anyone else, they argue, sure, but it’s not wrong.”  
Suddenly a chuckle came through his tears. “Well, if they’re okay with you wearing a dress…”  
Daya laughed and pushed him gently. “Shut up.”  
“Sorry. I’m sorry for freaking out like that.”  
Looking right at the bruise on his cheek, Daya asked, “Who did that?”  
After a glance his way, his eyes were set right at the ground as his dismissed, “Nothing. I’m okay.”  
“That’s not what I asked.”  
“You’re fucking nosy!”  
Daya laughed at that and admitted, “I am. I’ve always been overly curious. I’m sorry.”  
“Nah, it’s okay.” He sighed heavily, and it made his lips purse, which Daya noticed and had to cut his eyes away quickly. “Life isn’t great. Not like before the flu.”  
“How do you know? Are you thirty and are aging well or something?”  
For that, Alastar shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know. I mean, no, not that old. I don’t remember the flu or anything about the old world. I don’t know how old I am.”  
Jaw dropping, that’s what that was, and his jaw did drop, but he kept his shock to himself past that. The thoughts in his head, the birthdays he’d had, everyone celebrating, sweets and friends all wishing him well, toys, when he was young, beautiful material for his clothing when he got older. Smiling, food, parties into the night, it was all wonderful. “Wow, um, well, I’d say you’re about my age, and I’ll be twenty soon.”  
“Really? Do you really think?”  
“Yeah. That’s why I’m out here on my own, to prove to myself I’m becoming a man, and all that. You know, adults make you prove everything, to them or to yourself.”  
“I guess. Or they expect you to do stuff, without telling you to do it, then you do, and they get mad about it.”  
Finally, something he could relate to. “Nitpicking.”  
“Yeah.”  
Daya reached over and chanced touching him, keeping it gentle, lifting his chin so Alastar would look at him again. “Listen, we don’t have to kiss or anything. We can be friends. We can be anything you want.”  
“What if…what if, maybe someday, I want to? Would you…hate me?”  
Daya felt his face warming, and he smiled. “No. Not at all.” He dropped his hand and smile at once, confessing, “Like I said, though, I have to head home. It’ll take me a while, but I’m coming back. As soon as I can. I want to know more about you. Is that okay?”  
“How long?”  
Daya wanted to say he’d be back right away, but he knew his parents and his mother especially. “I don’t know. A week?”  
The disappointment on his face was in contrast with his words, “That’s fine. Do what you have to.”  
Before Daya left, Alastar grabbed his hand and pulled him back, pushing the staff from Daya’s hands. “Just in case you were lying.” As he was left to wonder what Alastar meant by that, he was being kissed.   
Daya’s entire body went limp and they didn’t touch at all except for their lips. It was long, and Daya didn’t try to push it, by bringing his tongue into it, but it was the best kiss of his life.   
Alastar pulled away, and turned his back on Daya, sniffing before he whispered, “You can go. Hurry.”  
Daya knew Alastar didn’t want him to see his tears. “I’ll hurry back too,” he said quickly before he started back to New Day, and suddenly, he felt what his mother must have felt when she named the place.   
His heart was lighter, and he felt as if he’d found home. A connection between people could come quickly, Julian said, like the way he’d instantly felt connected to Teresa, but for some, like Manuel and Anita had taken five years before they realized they had something special.   
The connection he felt with Alastar was instant. From the first second, he wanted him. Sure, that was probably his lust for the man’s naked body, but still, he’d wanted him. He wanted to run all the way home and scream it to the entire place that he’d finally found who he wanted to be with, but that was the last thing he could do.   
He stopped his fast walk, as that reality hit him. He wouldn’t be able to tell his parents. They’d flip out and never let him return. They viewed all strangers with suspicion and even those they let into New Day were not trusted for months or even years.   
For him to tell them that he’d met someone, that he was from another group, they’d lock the gate and never let him out again, and they’d be right to do it. He’d taken a terrible risk, and could have been killed, taken, anything.   
He knew that Alastar was good in his heart. He felt that, saw it in his eyes, heard it in his words, but they wouldn’t see or hear that. They’d never believe Daya, thinking him a child, too trusting.   
He got into the trees, and leaned back on one, groaning as he thought of lying to his parents. He hated to do that. The only time he did was when he snuck out of the fences, and that wasn’t a lie as much as it was an omission.   
That’s when it hit him. Unless they specifically asked him if he’d met anyone along the way, he just wouldn’t tell them. He’d let them think he’d been hunting all along. The only problem left was how to get back out. The walk was too far for a day. They’d wonder where he was going. There had to be something he could do.   
After gathering his turkeys and rabbits, he started walking quickly again, a plan forming in his head.   
Once Daya got closer to New Day, he set down the heavy carcasses, resting for a minute or two. He’d slept badly the night before, trudging back home, where he should be running back, victorious that he was alive, and brought food for his people.   
Instead, he was lost in thought, and heavy of heart. The smell of the day, the rich soil and wildflowers, that had welcomed him on his journey, they were cloying, reminding him constantly that he was about to lie to his parents.   
Omission, sure, but a lie. And if they did ask? If they asked if he’d seen anyone? He’d have to out and out lie. It was horrible. And wonderful, because, for the first time in his life, he had a secret. He had a mystery. He had an adventure that he didn’t have to share with anyone.   
The mix of the feelings was confusing, but it was a good confusion for once. It was keeping him alive with tingling on his skin and dreams passing through his mind.   
He’d seen another cougar, and he’d waved to her. Of course, it could have been the same one, but he didn’t care. He’d waved, and looked her in the eye, and she hadn’t killed him. He’d seen many elk wandering, and he’d waved to them as well. There wasn’t a thought in his head about where they’d been, so the hunters could claim a couple for New Day. He wanted them all to live, and be free, as he’d been. To find…to find that special, beautiful, handsome-”  
“Daya?”   
He jumped like a snake had bitten him as he heard the voice. Looking around, he saw Edmund, one of the farmers and a good friend of his father. “Edmund, hi.”  
“What are you doing out here by yourself?”  
The first person he saw on his way back home, and he was questioned already. That wasn’t a good sign. “I am allowed,” he mumbled and rushed past him, hurrying to the gate.   
When the gatekeeper saw him, he opened up immediately, there were his parents, like they knew he was coming. Another bad sign. His mother hugged him tightly. “Glad you’re home.”  
“Thanks, Mom.”  
Julian gave him a heavy slap on the back. “And with food. Good man, son.”  
Some people came to get the turkeys and rabbits from him and he was glad to be rid of them. The turkey was starting to stink. That gave him an idea to stall for some time. “I really need a bath.”  
“I’ve got one set up for you.”  
“How’d you know when I was going to be here?”  
While she gave him a sly smile, his father answered. “It’s her, she knows everything, don’t you know that by now?”  
He had to laugh at that. “Yeah, it’s creepy.”  
In their home, the kitchen was where their baths were taken, water warmed on the wood stove, poured into a long metal tub. He sunk into the water, thinking of Alastar, bathing in the freezing creek, the soap over his skin, making it shine…  
He saw his dick poking out of the water, and he covered it with both hands, worried he’d be seen, but he wouldn’t. His parents knew he wanted his privacy.   
The soak was short, as he was antsy, wanting to get back to Alastar. More was going through his head about him, not simply the extreme attraction he felt. Daya thought about his bruising, the things he said, the skittish way he acted.   
There was a woman who’d come to the camp a few years before who’d come with bruises, who stayed to herself and jumped whenever anyone approached her. Daya thought about that as he dressed quickly, getting his collar on as he was walking from his home across the commons.   
It had taken a year, but she’d come to feel more comfortable in the community, and about a year after that, she’d moved in with a man who treated her like a queen. Today, she was happy, weaving blankets for the community, beautiful blankets that many refused to use, instead, hanging them on their walls as ornament.   
Shawna was busy at her loom, pumping her feet setting the dyed hemp cords in place, another, and he hated to disturb her, but he had to know.   
“Excuse me, Shawna.”  
She stopped her weaving, smiling over at him. She was a woman a little older than his mother, a little heavier, but she’d come into the community stick-thin, bones sticking out. She blew her brown bangs from her eyes and pushed a stool over to him. “Sit. Tell me about your adventure.”  
He did take the seat, but couldn’t take the time to tell any tales when the questions were nagging. “I know you hate to talk about it, but when you were…out there, and you came here, bruises and all, you wouldn’t tell anyone how you got them, and I’m not asking how, but why.”  
“Why I got them?”  
“No! Why didn’t you say? To my knowledge you never have. Why?”  
Her head fell and her voice lowered, but she didn’t shy away from answering. “I was ashamed, embarrassed and I didn’t want anyone to know what I’d gone through.”  
Daya thought to Alastar, his actions. “Of course.”  
Head lifting, her eyes met his. “I won’t ask.”  
After he’d asked, he felt she deserved some explanation, but he couldn’t give it. “Thank you. Thank you for not asking, and I promise, you’ll know someday.”  
“I don’t need to, Daya. We, as humans, we have dreams and we have secrets, and those are things no one can take, and those are things that we can’t keep all our own, if we choose to.”  
Daya took the hand she reached out in offer, and she squeezed. Her eyes told a tale of their own. They were bright, happy, but in the past he’d seen them clouded with pain, with remembering those secrets she spoke of, and he knew that she did understand. “Thank you so much, Shawna.”  
Of course, he was embarrassed, especially with the way he thought of women. They were for sex, and not warriors. He’d been taught that. Teresa said the world was like that for centuries, casting women to the back of the room, never listening to them. They were seen as mothers and whores, never warriors and leaders. The moment in time that began to change, the world, as it was ended by men who couldn’t let that happen.   
So here it was, the men, teaching the women to be mothers or whores, and not only that, but good people, like Alastar, were silenced and beaten. Daya’s heart beat wildly in his chest, the need to get back to him, beg him to leave wherever and whoever he was with, it was like a clock ticking.   
And time was fast running out.   
He found Julian teaching some of the community children about the differences in the wild mushrooms that grew wild all over, in the fences and out, and he didn’t want to interrupt. He suddenly had a much larger respect for children being taught things.  
“See these spots? Those are bad spots. Repeat that, children, spots on a mushroom are bad.”  
In unison, the ten or so kids repeated, “Spots on mushrooms are bad.”  
He side-glanced at Daya, and told the kids, “Enough for today. Go back to your parents and do your chores.”  
Like he was expecting it, Julian threw an arm around Daya’s shoulders and asked, “What do you want me to convince your mom to do this time?”  
“Gee, I guess I’m obvious or something.”  
“You have that same look of determination in your eyes that she gets.”  
They walked to the far corner of the community, where the fencing butted the stone wall that bordered the entire western side, climbing the grade easily. Once there, they could see the entire settlement, everyone working, getting ready for winter which was a couple months away.   
The cabins all in a row, the apple and cherry trees that had been planted full of red fruits, men and women chopping firewood, the town, and it was a town, was buzzing with activity, and so was Daya’s mind.   
“What’s got you like this? You should be walking around the place with your chest out, proud that you returned unscathed and victorious. Well, except for those couple bruises you didn’t’ think we’d see.”  
Daya’s hand went to his head, where Alastar had landed a heavy blow in their fight. “Yeah, well, you said the wilderness had its dangers.”  
“It’s okay not to talk about it, Daya, but if it’s weighing so heavily on you, it may be better, for you, to get it off your chest.”  
That would be easy, if he knew what all was on his chest. “I need to go back out, Dad. I need to go back out and be gone longer than a couple days.”  
What he’d expected, shouts of denial, blustering about his safety, none of it came. The sigh that was long and sounded like the wind through a hollow tunnel, it surprised him. “I thought as much.”  
After his head whipped to the side, he saw his father was looking out over the town he’d helped to build. His eyes, though, they didn’t seem to take in the workers, the smiles and the accomplishment. His head held long, deep creases as he was also lost in thought.   
He, however, didn’t hold his thoughts in as Daya was doing. “It’s not going to be easy. I understand why you came to me first, Daya. It’s been the same since you were young. You knew I was the easy touch, that I’d give in to you, because, well, we’re both men and understand better what men need. This time, though, you’re going to be a man and ask her yourself.”  
“But Dad! You know she’s going t scream about me already showing I could do it, and want to know why.”  
“I want to know too, Daya. See, your mom and me, we’re both looking out for you. I’m not your mother, but since the day your were born on this earth, I’ve loved you and carried you in my heart like she carried you in her body and always in her heart. You don’t give her credit, but you do know that she wants you to be a man and stand on your own. The only difference is, she still sees a part of you as that little baby that was bundled in her arms. That child that could do nothing on your own and needed her to feed and cloth you, love you, care for you. That’s been her most important job.”  
He looked out again over the community and waved a hand there. “All this? Daya, it wasn’t for them. People, families, friends, she didn’t want any of it for herself. She wanted this for you. We could have gone to some mountaintop and raised you there, and it would have been much easier. Hidden away from the humans that can be the worst of predators, there she could have kept you as a tiny child for much longer. Her heart, though, and her head both told her that you’d need other people. You needed friends and lovers and the teachings of adults other than the two of us. And you have thrived here, because she sacrificed what she wanted for what you needed.”  
It all hit home more than it ever had. That was a mother’s love, one that was unconditional, yes, and required sacrifice that could be painful. “I’m going to hurt her just asking.”  
“Oh, yes, Daya, but just a part of her. Another part of her will be proud of you for asking.”  
Julian brushed Daya’s hair over his shoulder and admitted, “I love you, Daya, as she does, and I am worried too.”  
He turned to his father, the man who’d taught him so much as he’d grown and wondered if Alastar had that. “I love you too, Dad, and I promise, I will be careful.”  
“Like I said, Daya, you have to talk to her yourself, but if she asks my opinion, which I’m sure she won’t, I will tell her that I agree to it. You are not finished finding yourself.”  
“Thank you.”  
He found his mother at home, scrubbing clothes in the wash pan on the porch of the house. He sat by her, and took one of the shirts she’s finished with, helping her wring more water from it.  
On the way down from the wall, he’d made a decision. The way to approach his mother wasn’t the way he’d done it all his life, in fear and respect of the woman, but more of an equal, as she claimed all the citizens of New Day to be. Equal to her in every way, even as they looked to her for guidance and protection.   
“Daya? You have something to ask me?”  
His parents knew him well, but for once, she was way off. “No, Mom.”  
She nodded, smiling as she handed him another dripping shirt. “Okay, what then?”  
“I am not asking. I’m not asking my mother, anyway, and I’d like the blessing of my queen, but being that I am in line to lead with you soon, I am only asking from respect and as a formality.”  
The pants she was washing fell into the bucket as she turned fully to him, her own deeply lined forehead telling of her immediate concern. “Excuse me?”  
“I’m going back out, Mom, and I’m going to be gone a week, maybe two. I have something to do, and I can’t explain it to you. Not yet. It may be important, and it may be the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life so far.”  
The words, those that he’d practiced all the way from the stone wall, came out clearly. That was a relief, as he was sure his voice would be shaking.   
Remarkably, she went back to her chore, and didn’t scream at him for being crazy to even thinking of such a thing. The water was dirty, so she slapped the wet pants on the floor of the porch, dumped the water, and sat back in her metal chair, huffing, “I knew this fucking day would come.”  
Daya was speechless, as that wasn’t an answer, but he had no idea how to respond, or if he should respond. “W-what day?”  
“When you’d figure out you weren’t a fucking prisoner here, and you could leave any time you wanted.”  
“But I’m still underage!”  
She glared over at him, and he realized he was making an argument for her side of things.   
Shutting his mouth, he watched her, and she watched him. They had that standoff for a long time before she asked, “Are you sure you have to do this?”  
“I…I am. I’ll be careful, I swear. I won’t forget everything you and Dad have taught me.”  
The pants were forgotten to sit in the empty tub as she sat back, her eyes far away like Julian’s had been. “When you were little, I knew it would come. I’d lose you, and no, I’m not saying lose you forever. I was going to lose my kid to this man you’d grow up to be, being brave and wise well beyond your years. You could have been nice enough to surprise me and be a lazy asshole who had no yearning for anything but Ruth’s apple pie or my venison roast.”  
“Yeah, fat kid, no sense of adventure, I can see why you’d like that.”  
Suddenly serious, she asked, while not looking at him, “Is it important, this trip?”  
He already wasn’t telling her everything, but thankfully, she hadn’t asked, so the truth spilled out easily, “Maybe the most important thing I’ve ever done.”  
“And you’re not getting yourself killed for this…thing?”  
Then she did look at him, right in the eye, and he knew she’d see right into his heart. So he did tell her, truthfully, from his heart, “I can’t promise anything, but if I did, it would be a good death, Mom.”  
“That was fucked up, but at least you didn’t try to blow smoke up my ass.”  
He had to smile at that. “I never did know what that meant. Do people…do they do that?”  
“Jesus, Daya, no, people don’t do that, and if they did, I sure as hell don’t want to know about it.”  
“Okay, good.”  
It was a day before she’d allow him to leave, however, so he could properly rest and pack up for more than a couple days. He’d been given a small tent, two blankets from Shawna, three heavy bags of jerky and another of pinon nuts.   
Once he set out, his heart was heavy to go, to leave for more than a quick adventure in the woods, like the last time. He was going to help someone, and maybe finding out if the beating of his heart, the quickening of it each time he thought of Alastar, if that was some childish crush or if he may find the man he was meant to be with.


End file.
